Aside from a few books on Stregheria published by New Age publishing houses, are there any sources which indicate that any living temples of pre-Christian Roman religion survive to this day?
thanks in advance
I’m from Italy so I’ve studied and practiced what is called “Stregheria” for some years. There are some books but the are written in Italian that I think you don’t speak. In English there are some books by Raven Grimassi, but they are fake.
The problem is that also the italian books are fake. This is because the idea that a compact tradition of italian witchcraft exists is false and is very much a modern mythos.
Obviously the witches existed and their practice were very linked to the old roman pagan religion with some christian influence (it’s not rare that in an old italian conjuration Diane and a chatolic saint are both invoked).
However a single tradition and a compact magical corpus don’t exist today just because have never existed.
The magical practices, the mythos etc have always been very fragmented and strictly grounded to the different parts of the italian territory, and the various familiar traditions were pretty much oral (consider that a real linguistic union came in Italy in the 1930).
So if you are interested in Stregheria you can read about it and get started, but just know that is a form of neopaganism, not a old survived tradition.
Second option: you should know an italian family that still practices an eriditary magical sorcery tradition and learn something, but again it’s not THE italian or roman witchcraft, but only a fragment.
In Italy there are also some groups that named themselves traditional roman pagans. They study very deeply the roman history and religion and try to rebuild it nowday. But sincerely they are more “strange” lettered people who like to dress roman customses and play role games. And I doubt many of them are into real magick.
Surely there are also serious people here that worship the roman gods with a magickal aptitude, but again they’re not survived traditions, they’re rebuild.
Widdershins, do you know anything about the UR Group?
Yes they were active about 100 years ago and I think they were the kind of people that I defined “serious” in the post above. But not too much linked to the roman tradition.
They also wrote a 3 volumes book “Introduzione alla Magia” (introduction to magic, I doubt it has been translated in english). It’s a very very complicated book, full of pythagoric numerology, hermetic simbolism, alchemical metaphors etc., an old style magick book so to speak where you can read ten pages written in symbols talking about the body of light without saying that if you want to work with it the first thing you have to do is relax your body. Hope this gets the idea across.
I don’t know if nowadays anybody still fallows their teachments, I think yes because in the end their teachments are hermeticism and many people still love hermeticism.